Discovering that your newborn suffered a preventable birth injury instantly alters your family’s entire future. Parents facing brachial plexus injuries need reliable Baltimore Erb’s palsy lawyers to uncover exactly what went wrong in the delivery room.
Hospital risk managers frequently attempt to shield negligent doctors by claiming that shoulder dystocia complications are unavoidable natural events. This defense leaves vulnerable families facing overwhelming, lifelong financial burdens for specialized nerve surgeries and continuous physical therapy.
The Law Offices of Steven H. Heisler stops these corporate tactics by fiercely advocating for the truth. Contact us today at (410) 625-4878 or via our online online contact form to start protecting your child’s health and future.
Why Choose the Law Offices of Steven H. Heisler for Your Birth Injury Claim
Our firm brings nearly four decades of trial experience to families facing catastrophic birth injuries throughout the state of Maryland. As a trusted personal injury lawyer, we know how to investigate obscure delivery room mistakes and successfully stand up to massive corporate healthcare systems.
Decades of Local Litigation
Steven H. Heisler has successfully fought for severely injured Maryland families since 1988. Our team regularly handles deeply complex negligence claims against major local facilities and their well-funded defense teams.
Deep Roots and Union Values
Steven H. Heisler’s unique background in labor union organizing means we naturally advocate for everyday people against massive, powerful corporate entities. We treat every single client like close family through our dedicated Inner Circle program and ongoing community outreach efforts.
Direct Attorney Attention
You’ll never be passed off to a junior paralegal when facing a life-changing instance of infant trauma. Our firm provides honest, straightforward legal counsel directly from experienced trial attorneys who truly understand your family’s daily struggles.
Contact the Law Offices of Steven H. Heisler immediately at (410) 625-4878 for a comprehensive review of your delivery records. You can also reach our legal team right now by submitting your details through our secure online contact form.
What Are the First Signs of Erb’s Palsy in a Newborn?
The clearest early sign of Erb’s palsy is limited or absent movement in one arm. Some brachial plexus injuries are noticed at birth, while others become more apparent as parents watch how their baby moves, feeds, and responds to touch.
These symptoms don’t reveal on their own whether the nerves are stretched, torn, or separated from the spinal cord. A pediatric specialist must evaluate the injury and track your child’s recovery over time.
Prompt care can also help your family begin appropriate therapy and understand whether further treatment is needed.
Early signs can include:
- Limited Arm Movement: Your baby moves one arm less than the other or holds it close to the body with the elbow straight.
- Difficulty Bending the Elbow: An upper brachial plexus injury can make it difficult for the baby to lift the shoulder or bend the affected arm.
- Uneven Moro Reflex: When startled, your baby extends only one arm instead of moving both arms outward.
- Weak Hand or Wrist Movement: More extensive injuries can affect the wrist, hand, or grip, although hand strength can remain intact in some cases.
- Reduced Sensation: Your baby responds less to touch on the affected arm, but reduced sensation alone does not establish a brachial plexus injury.
Photographs, videos, pediatric records, specialist evaluations, and therapy notes can document how the injury appeared and changed over time. Our Baltimore Erb’s palsy lawyers collect this evidence and compare it with the delivery records to help determine when the injury occurred, how serious it is, and whether negligent care contributed to it.
What Delivery Mistakes Can Cause Erb’s Palsy?
When a delivery team uses improper techniques, it can cause a brachial plexus injury. Proving liability requires medical evidence showing what the provider did wrong and how that mistake harmed your child.
Shoulder dystocia is one event our Baltimore Erb’s palsy attorneys investigate closely. It occurs when the baby’s shoulder becomes lodged behind the mother’s pelvic bone during delivery. Since it’s an obstetric emergency, the care team must respond promptly and use accepted maneuvers rather than pulling forcefully on the baby’s head or neck.
Shoulder dystocia is not always preventable or predictable, so a poor outcome alone doesn’t establish negligence. We review the medical charts, fetal monitoring records, delivery notes, and testimony from the people involved.
Independent medical experts can then assess whether the obstetrician, nurses, or hospital failed to provide appropriate care. Depending on the evidence, the hospital can also be responsible for negligence by its employees or for its own unsafe policies and practices.
Delivery room failures can include:
- Overlooking Important Risk Factors: The care team fails to properly evaluate suspected fetal macrosomia, maternal diabetes, a history of shoulder dystocia, or other information that affects delivery planning.
- Using Excessive Traction: Pulling too forcefully on the baby’s head or neck during shoulder dystocia results in stretching or tearing the brachial plexus nerves.
- Mismanaging Shoulder Dystocia: Providers depart from accepted care by delaying their response or failing to use appropriate maneuvers to release the trapped shoulder.
- Misusing Delivery Instruments: Forceps and vacuum extractors require proper training and careful use. We investigate whether the device was appropriate, correctly positioned, and used with acceptable force.
- Failing To Escalate Care: When labor stops progressing or new complications appear, the team must reassess the delivery plan. An unreasonable delay in seeking additional help or performing a cesarean delivery can become important evidence.
Our Baltimore Erb’s palsy lawyers work with medical experts to separate an unavoidable complication from an injury caused by negligent care. That analysis helps identify the responsible providers and determine whether your family has grounds for a medical malpractice claim.
The Role of Medical Experts in a Maryland Erb’s Palsy Claim
Maryland law generally requires a qualified medical expert to certify that your healthcare provider breached the standard of care and caused your child’s injury before a medical malpractice claim can proceed. The expert must have professional knowledge and experience relevant to the care at issue.
We work with qualified obstetricians, pediatric neurologists, and other specialists who can review your medical records and explain whether the delivery team failed to provide appropriate care. Their testimony can help establish your claim during depositions, settlement negotiations, and trial.
Securing Compensation With Our Baltimore Erb’s Palsy Lawyers
Our Baltimore Erb’s palsy attorneys build claims that account for your child’s past care, current treatment, and future medical needs. Children suffering from severe nerve avulsions may never regain the full use of their affected hand or arm.
This permanent physical impairment heavily impacts their future ability to work, perform daily personal tasks, and live independently. We collaborate with vocational economists and pediatric specialists to demand a broad range of vital economic and non-economic damages.
Common categories of compensation include:
- Surgical Interventions: Your claim can seek the cost of nerve grafting, muscle transfer procedures, and other treatments at specialized pediatric hospitals.
- Ongoing Physical Therapy: Compensation can account for rehabilitation needed to preserve movement and reduce the risk of muscle atrophy or painful joint contractures.
- Future Medical Care: Damages can include specialist appointments, diagnostic testing, medications, and follow-up treatment your child is expected to need.
- Adaptive Medical Equipment: Recoverable expenses include orthopedic braces, custom splints, and other equipment that helps your child function more independently.
- Loss of Earning Capacity: This compensation addresses future income your child could lose if the disability limits their education, career options, or ability to work.
- Pain and Suffering: Non-economic damages can reflect physical pain, emotional distress, inconvenience, and the effect of the injury on your child’s quality of life.
- Physical Impairment and Disfigurement: Compensation can also account for permanent weakness, reduced range of motion, visible differences, scarring, or limitations on daily activities.
Why a Life Care Plan Matters in an Erb’s Palsy Claim
A life care plan estimates the treatment, support, and equipment your child is likely to need throughout life. It can address future surgeries, therapy, specialist care, medications, assistive devices, home support, and other injury-related expenses.
We work with medical professionals and life care planning experts to connect each projected need to your child’s diagnosis and treatment history, while helping families understand how medical misdiagnoses can compound a birth injury’s long-term effects. Economists can then calculate how much those services are expected to cost over time.
This evidence helps insurers and juries understand that the financial impact of a serious brachial plexus injury can continue long after the case ends.
How Our Baltimore Erb’s Palsy Lawyers Build a Medical Negligence Claim
Our Baltimore Erb’s palsy lawyers investigate how the delivery team prepared for and responded to complications. We obtain and analyze medical records from facilities such as the University of Maryland Medical Center and work with independent medical experts to evaluate the facts.
An Erb’s palsy claim requires evidence that a member of the delivery team failed to provide proper care and caused your child’s brachial plexus injury.
Erb’s palsy can occur when the nerves between the neck and shoulder are stretched during birth, but the injury alone doesn’t prove medical negligence.
Here’s what matters and requires a closer look:
- Warning Signs: We examine whether the care team recognized signs of fetal macrosomia, which means the baby was expected to be unusually large.
- Delivery Decisions: Medical experts can assess whether the obstetrician chose an appropriate delivery plan based on the risks known before labor.
- Shoulder Dystocia Response: Our Baltimore Erb’s palsy attorneys review whether the team used accepted techniques when the baby’s shoulder became lodged during delivery.
- Use of Force: Records and expert analysis help determine whether excessive traction was applied to the baby’s head, neck, or shoulders.
This investigation helps us identify where the care fell short and whether that failure caused your child’s injury. We then use the medical evidence to build a claim seeking compensation for the care and support your child could need.
Our firm has used this same careful approach in other complex Baltimore medical malpractice cases, including a $475,000 settlement involving the death of a four-month-old boy and an $850,000 settlement involving a patient who died after an allegedly premature hospital discharge.
FAQ for Baltimore Erb’s Palsy Lawyers
How Do I Know if the Doctor Caused My Baby’s Erb’s Palsy?
Medical negligence may have occurred if the physician used dangerous traction on the baby’s head during a complicated vaginal delivery. An independent obstetric expert must meticulously review your clinical delivery records to confirm that the physician’s actions fell below the accepted standard of medical care.
Will My Child’s Claim Cover Future Surgery Costs?
A properly calculated legal claim actively seeks comprehensive funding for all anticipated future medical procedures related to the initial birth trauma. We partner directly with certified life care planners to accurately project the lifetime costs of necessary nerve grafts and advanced muscle transfer surgeries.
What Happens if the Hospital Ignores My Birth Injury Claim?
Large medical institutions sometimes ignore unrepresented patients in hopes that the exhausted family will simply give up and walk away. Hiring an Erb’s palsy lawyer in Baltimore pressures the hospital’s legal department to respond to the allegations of negligence or risk going to court.
How Do Baltimore Erb’s Palsy Lawyers Help Me Get Compensation?
The Baltimore Erb’s palsy lawyers at Law Offices of Steven H. Heisler can document the full effect of your child’s injury and pursue compensation. That can include surgery, physical therapy, future treatment, adaptive equipment, lost earning capacity, pain and suffering, and permanent physical limitations.
We work with medical specialists and financial experts to calculate both current losses and needs that could continue for years.
Can We Claim Damages for the Emotional Toll on Our Family?
Maryland law firmly allows injured patients to seek vital non-economic damages following a devastating instance of medical malpractice lawyer. This specific compensation directly addresses the severe psychological trauma, emotional distress, and daily physical pain caused by the permanent childhood disability.
Protect Your Child’s Future Today
Your precious child deserves the absolute best medical care available, and negligent healthcare providers must face accountability for the harm they cause. Delaying vital legal action can permanently jeopardize critical medical evidence and severely weaken your family’s negotiating power.
The Law Offices of Steven H. Heisler stands ready to advocate fiercely for your family’s legal rights and long-term financial stability. Let our team handle the heavy burden of litigation while you support your baby’s ongoing physical recovery.
Contact us immediately at (410) 625-4878 or visit our office at 1011 N Calvert St, Baltimore, MD 21202 to launch your investigation. You can also easily reach our staff at any time through our online form.
Attorney Steve Heisler
Steve Heisler decided in 1996 that he was going to focus his law practice exclusively on injury cases. Since then, he has been representing injured people against insurance companies, disreputable medical practitioners and Big Pharma, and doing it with compassion, honesty and level-headed rationality. [ Attorney Bio ]
